a seventy sixth story...'provision'

He joined us the first morning on the roof top bar for breakfast.  The roof top bar overlooked the harbour, flanked with pink and orange fronted buildings, where boats of various kinds were moored: small fishing skiffs, high-masted yachts, sleek motor cruisers – the water was green and clear as glass.

The first thing he did on sitting down with us was to spill coffee all over his lap.  He seemed furtive, the kind of person who, in life, skips insect-like from one thing to the next without lingering to take very much  in.  And once he had cleaned himself up with hurried dabs of a dish cloth borrowed from the kitchen, he drank his coffee in quick, regular sips, as if it were about to evaporate, between sips nibbling at his croissant in the manner of one biting at one's finger nails.

We had seen him dining alone at dinner the night before in the hotel restaurant, where you could enjoy panoramic views of the entire bay - the winking fairy lights of the old port town, and the lighthouse beacon a little further out to sea, made for a romantic experience  – and had felt sorry for him , or at least Terri had.  In the bar, later, we approached him and shared a couple of whisky sodas together.  Terri had a vodka tonic instead.

He was in the printing business, and was visting Italy for work.  He told me that the Italians had the best colour printing presses in the world.  The kind of books he worked with were popular reference books, ones with big, colour photographs.  He asked if I wanted  to come up to his room to see some samples  he had with him, including the definitive picture book of New York through the ages, showing the evolution of the skyscraper and so on.  But Terri, I could tell, wasn’t so keen.  So far in her estimation I could sense that he hadn’t turned out to be the mystery stranger she had been hoping he would be.  The romance was gone.  

‘He wasn’t even an author’, she said when we had returned to our room and were both undressing for bed, ‘who cares about pubilshers’.  ‘Printers’, I corrected her.  ‘Whatever, she said, ‘they’re all small time business people these days anyhow’.

Certainly I was aware there wasn’t a lot of money in publishing any more.  And it lead to me to reflect why people persist in occupations where there is little opportunity of becoming rich, but I stopped after a while – there were a myriad  of possible reasons, all as good, or bad, as each other.  

Then, after breakfast on the roof top bar the following morning, I asked Terri whether she thought money was a necessity in achieving happiness.  Without missing a beat Terri replied ‘yes’.  That’s what I like about my wife, she sees life a certain way, and for the time being I am able to provide for her.